Gemini News Archive

Web Feature | 2017 March 23

Using the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a team of astronomers led by J. Chilcote (University of Toronto) found that the low mass stellar companion β Pictoris b is about 13 times more massive than Jupiter with a surface temperature of about 1720 K.

Web Feature | 2017 February 23

Using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South, a team led by Jay Farihi (University College London) found, for the first time, a dust and debris disk surrounding a binary star with a white dwarf as a substellar companion. To date, almost all of the known planetary systems which include a white dwarf are single stars.

Web Feature | 2017 February 22

Gemini reached another significant milestone with the celebration of the official handover to Base Facility Operations (BFO) at Gemini South. About a year ago, Gemini North reached the same milestone, so now both Gemini telescopes operate routinely from the base facilities in La Serena, Chile and Hilo, Hawai‘i.

Web Feature | 2017 February 7

Gemini follows up on candidate galaxies with fading active galactic nuclei (AGN) first identified thanks to the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. The gas clouds around these fading AGN are dominated by rotation, unlike those around radio-loud AGN, which are outflows coming from the nuclei.

Press Release | 2017 January 5

Gemini Observatory provides critical rapid follow up observations of a Fast Radio Burst – one of modern astronomy's greatest enigmas. These observations provide the first details on a burst's distant extragalactic host.

Press Release | 2016 December 29

A new image released today by the Gemini Observatory offers a deep, revealing view into an active stellar nursery known as GGD 27. The infrared view peels back layers of obscuring gas and dust to unshroud the inner workings of star formation.

Web Feature | 2016 December 13

Using spectroscopic data from the Gemini North telescope, researchers have probed a complex binary T Tauri system that hints at a hidden planetary body shrouded deep within a stellar environment at the late stages of formation.

Press Release | 2016 November 9

Astronomers using critical observations from the Gemini Observatory have found the strongest evidence yet that the formation of more massive stars follow a path similar to their lower-mass brethren - but on steroids!

Web Feature | 2016 October 26

A team using the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS) with the Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) have, for the first time, measured the stellar masses relative to the physical sizes of several galaxies in a cluster at a lookback time of about 5 billion years.

Web Feature | 2016 October 20

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in our Solar System. Now, the longest series of frequent high-resolution tracking of Io’s thermal emission is providing insights on Io’s volcanoes thanks to a powerful joint observation program between the Gemini North telescope (with NIRI+Altair instrument) and the W.M. Keck Observatory.

Press Release | 2016 October 12

An international team of astronomers, using the Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics System (GeMS) and the high resolution camera GSAOI, brought the ancient globular cluster NGC 6624 into razor-sharp focus and determined its age with very high accuracy － a challenging observation even from space.

Web Feature | 2016 September 20

Astronomers studying a mysterious phenomenon known as Lyman-alpha blobs (LABs) have discovered several of these high-energy objects in galaxies that are much closer than previously known. The discovery is significant because these closer specimens are much easier to study, and because they live at a time when the Universe was much older and more mature, allowing astronomers to study their evolution with cosmic time

Press Release | 2016 August 1

Press Release | 2016 July 18

Gemini Observatory plays a key role in the latest harvest of over 100 confirmed exoplanets from NASA’s K2 mission, the repurposed Kepler spacecraft. Three instruments on the Gemini North telescope delivered precise images verifying many of the candidate stars as planetary system hosts. Researchers note that these systems could contain a considerable number of rocky, potentially Earth-like exoplanets.

Press Release | 2016 June 17

The world’s most advanced adaptive optics system reveals “shocking” details on star formation in a new image released by the Gemini Observatory probing a swarm of young and forming stars that appear to have been shocked into existence.

Web Feature | 2016 May 24

Using the Gemini Planet Imager astronomers have successfully monitored the motion of a planet around the forming exoplanet system orbiting the star HD 95086 and suggest that more unseen planets are present.